Are you not doing the exact same thing?
There is no tolerance paradox. For example, people's ability to advocate for the repeal of the 1st Amendment is protected by the 1st Amendment. Allowing people to advocate for the removal of the 1st Amendment, despite being a massively unpopular position (I hope), is an act of tolerance. What is not correct is attempting to claim that it is an act of tolerance to harass or shut down those people advocating for the Amendment's repeal because people believe it would lead to a worse society.
However, the fact that people even think to place tolerance of conservative views on the same level as planning homicide is ridiculous. Advocating that country raise the minimum salary for H1Bs, wearing a Trump hat (when your co-workers are wearing Hilary gear), advocating for stronger border enforcement, etc. are nowhere near the levels of abject illegality as plotting a murder. The notion that these are even comparable is testament to how much of an echo chamber tech in Silicon Valley has become.
The whole issue is made more complex by Trump's endorsement of (and by, I guess) the modern Nazi movement in America. When you embrace partisan politics and associate yourself with that kind of group, even otherwise 'good' things will be viewed with skepticism.
(For the record, I am one of those people who is uncomfortable voicing my political opinions at work; I'd never do it in the workplace, and have received harassment - mild, but very targeted - because of comments I've made here on HN and elsewhere on the internet. So I know what it's like to keep quiet for fear of cultural reprisal :)
Pointing to the most extreme end of political spectrum as justification for silencing or ostracizing the people everywhere on that half of the spectrum is both disingenuous and terrible for the political atmosphere. Imagine the reversed situation, someone stated "our company should tolerate liberal views" and I responded by saying, "but what about the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward, and the genocide perpetrated against the Ukrainians by the USSR?" It would be absurd, which is also how I regard this response.
Tolerating conservative views is no more an endorsement of Nazis and the holocaust than tolerating liberal views is an endorsement of the Khmer Rouge, the Holodmor, etc. Silicon Valley would be a better place without this kind of rhetoric.
> anti-science FUD types
Arguably, this could just as easily be applied to mainstream liberal views on the danger (or lack thereof) of nuclear power, GMOs, etc.
> Arguably, this could just as easily be applied to mainstream liberal views on the danger (or lack thereof) of nuclear power, GMOs, etc.
Yeah, it's obnoxious and dangerous there, too.
And regardless this is straying from the core point. Of course, advocating the mass extermination of Jews, Roma, or any other group would be grounds for a company to fire employees that make those statements - I did not and do not attempt to state that every piece of speech protected by the 1st Amendment should be allowed in the workplace. Rather, the simple principle is that tolerating a view that some people consider intolerant is not, itself, an act of intolerance. Let me put this in a scenario that is more appropriate to a workplace:
* You have two co-workers, A and B.
* A thinks that affirmative action (structuring hiring policies such that non white & Asians, and women have greater chance to get offers than non-diverse candidates) is necessary to have a tolerant workplace, and by extension not having these policies is an intolerant situation.
* B thinks that discriminating on the basis of sex or race in the hiring process is intolerant.
* Both A and B go to HR claiming that the other is making intolerant statements.
I would argue that if HR takes action against _either_ employee that would be an act of intolerance. Allowing A to make that statement isn't an act of intolerance against B, nor is B's an act of intolerance against A. Sure, I get that A _believes_ B's viewpoint to be intolerant and vice versa. But the company's decision to allow both statements is not an act of intolerance because of that. This is what I'm getting at by saying "there is no paradox of tolerance" in allowing speech. True, individual speakers may think the other is intolerance. But there is no intolerance in allowing these conflicting views to co-exist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...
Yes, that's correct. But not forced to be accepted as a debatable idea, a polite disagreement, or a view point that deserves a seat at the table.
>(structuring hiring policies such that non white & Asians, and women have greater chance to get offers than non-diverse candidates)
This is not affirmative action. Affirmative action is structuring hiring policies such that everyone gets an equal chance at an offer - even if it means that some groups get more help to get there than others.
Hence the comic:http://i2.wp.com/interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads...
If this is the case, then the diversity policies at big-name Bay Area tech companies often go beyond affirmative action and into the realm of outright discrimination. For example, identical resumes at my company have 3-4x chance of getting an interview if the name suggests the applicant is a woman and or black or Hispanic. You may or may not agree that "structuring hiring policies such that non white & Asians, and women have greater chance to get offers than non-diverse candidates" is affirmative action, but the point remains: that's what many Silicon Valley companies are doing.